Rendang (Dry Curry) is one of well known dishes from Indonesia. It is originated from Minangkabau (more popular known as Padang) or West Sumatra province. In Indonesia, it’s called Rendang Padang or Rendang Minangkabau. Rendang is often made from beef (or occasionally beef liver, chicken, goat, water buffalo, duck, clam, or vegetables like green jackfruit or cassava).

Many Indonesians who live in abroad don’t have any patience to cook it. It takes hours to get the perfect rendang in taste and appearance. The authentic rendang is enriched by turmeric leaves and asam kandis not turmeric root and tamarind. However, tamarind is common to be applied for substituting asam kandis in Java island.

To get the closest taste, I have planted my own turmeric roots in pots for yielding the leaves. Beside giving very nice flavour, turmeric leaf has benefits to be added in rendang:
1. Give coconut milk base foods a longer shelf life
2. Help neutralizing saturated fat contents due to the combination of coconut milk and beef

Asam kandis (Garcinia xanthochymus) is very popular to be used in Sumatran dishes. Since I don’t have any access to get it. I substituted for kokkam or kokum (Garcinia indica) which is popular in Western India food. For some people who familiar with South India food such as Kerala, kodampuli or gorakha (Garcinia gummi-gutta) can be used as substitution. Asam kandis, kokum/kokam, kodampuli Kokum or kokam are belong to the same family of Garcinia or mangoosteen family, so they can be used interchangeably. Kokkam and asam kandis have the same colour, black. The difference, asam kandis is smaller than kokkam.

For me, it’s very easy to get kokkam since Winnipeg has a large community of Indian. I usually buy a pacakge of kokkam from the Indian/Carribean grocers. Seeing Indian (especially South Indian) ingredients in Sumatran dishes are not unusual. You may or may not know that Sumatra dishes especially Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra have very heavy influence from South Indian cuisines.

Since Indonesian and American/Canadian cuts of beef are different, I’ll use both terms. The picture of American cut can be seen on wikipedia while I’ll put the Indonesian cut picture below the recipe.Remember: I have twisted the recipe to where I live now, due to lacking fresh ingredient resources and efficiency work. Originally, this recipe uses fresh coconut milk that is yielded from grated coconut flesh, mix with coconut water and squeeze them to get a special taste of coconut milk. Also, it is added by grated coconut and toasted until really dry, then pureed or ground until smooth and oily

I found a great substitute for those, a combination of pure creamed coconut, pure canned young coconut water and coconut milk in UHT packages.

4. Return the smooth spices and the 2 kaffir lime leaves to a pot and combine with warm coconut milk mixture. Boil them together for 15 minutes at a medium-high heat.

5. Add beef chunks, asam kandis and salt. Let cook until the mixture starts to oil and thick. At this stage, the fragrant aroma of spices begins to smell.

6. Reduce to low heat and stir once a while. When the liquid absorbs, it’s time to add stirring frequency, so the mixture is not going to be scorched on the bottom. Savory aroma starts to come out. Keep stirring until darken, dry and oily.

Pepy, the Rendang looks painfully delicious! It is such a coincidence that I was cooking chicken rendang for the very first time too at home a couple of weeks ago. Well done, Pepy. Beautiful picture too

Jun, thanks! This was my second time of making rendang from scratch. First made was painful, because I had to cook 12 kgs beef for Indonesian food event here. Honestly, I never make chicken rendang, but I made clam rendang before. I used the instant mix.

Hi Pepy, this is one of my favs Indonesian dishes. Wow, a LOT of work and yours looks yummy. I'm going to link to this in my blog so people can make at home. I just posted about taking students to our local Indonesian restaurant in Miami Beach.

Welcome to Indonesia Eats

Indonesia Eats is written and photographed by Pepy Nasution; an Indonesian-born Winnipeg (Canada)-based food photographer.

A collection of Indonesian and Asian recipes with style, eye-catching photographs and personal stories about cooking Indonesian and being Indonesian away from home. Indonesia Eats is a memoir of her homeland.